Gundam Wing Fan Fiction / Fan Fiction ❯ Peace, Love, and Family: The Story of the Vanuli Three ❯ The Talk ( Chapter 11 )

Disclaimer: I do not own any things Harry Potter-the characters, setting, plot, everything belongs to the wonderful J. K. Rowling and whomever else she decides. I do not own anything Gundam Wing-the characters, setting, plot, everything belongs to (I think) Bandai and Sunrise.

Spoilers: This fic contains spoilers for books 1-5 of Harry Potter and all of the episodes of Gundam Wing. This fic does not include Endless Waltz.

Rating: NC17

Pairings: Neville/Harry, 2x1

Summary: Two years ago, the One Year War ended. At this time, the five heroes-the Gundam pilots-disappeared from the Muggle world. Three of them-pilots 02, 03, and 05-reappeared shortly after in the Wizarding world, as students at Hogwarts School of Witchraft and Wizardry. Now, twenty months after the fact, Heero Yuy and Quatre Winner are coming to Hogwarts, and they're bringing all of their secrets with them. The world-especially one Harry Potter-will never be the same.

Peace, Love, and Family:

The Story of the Vanuli Three

Chapter 11: The Talk

Harry avoided Quatre and Heero from Saturday night until Tuesday night. Any time they were in the same room as him, he left. If he couldn't leave, as in the case of classes, he stayed as far away from them as humanly possible. This led to him being on the Slytherin side during Potions and Care of Magical Creatures, but Harry didn't care. Not much, anyway. As long as none of the Slytherins touched him-especially Catalonia, who he was also avoiding-he was fine. Except for the fact that his stomach gnawed at him for eating so little (he did the grab and dash thing in order to leave the Great Hall quicker), his nerves were shot (it came from always looking over his shoulder to see if They were there), and his nightmares came back (he took to sleeping in the Common Room to lessen the time he spent with, around, or near Quatre and Heero).

Harry was not having a fun time. So on Wednesday night, after having failed to block Remus' hex during his "tutoring" for the third time in a row, Harry gave up. He threw in the towel, admitted defeat, just all around gave up. Consciously not being around Them only made Harry think of Them more. It was upsetting him, disturbing him, and most importantly, distracting him. Harry could not afford to be distracted. Not with Voldemort on the loose and the death toll rising every day.

Harry would go to Quatre and Heero. He would demand an explanation, and they would give it to him. He would catch them in a lie and turn them over to Professor Dumbledore, who would then properly dispose of them. Afterwards, Harry's only worries would be about a psychotic maniac trying to kill him and all his loved ones. The usual.

When Remus let Harry out of the session, he practically sprinted for Gryffindor Tower. He yelled out the password to the Fat Lady-hopefully not waking up anyone-and for the first time in several days, ascended the stairs to the boys' dorms during sleeping hours. However, he had no intention of going to sleep.

Harry opened the door, and his eyes immediately went to his own bed, as if they were drawn by some unseen force. His curtains were open, flung wide in such a way as to seem haphazard, but Harry knew it was intentional. The light of the moon, flowing in from the window by Dean's bed, illuminated the occupants of Harry's bed. They lay in apparent slumber, nestled against each other.

They were breathtaking. They were gorgeous. They were awake. And, Harry knew, they were waiting for him.

***

Heero and Quatre waited for Harry the same way they had waited since Sunday night. Saturday night, they waited on Quatre's bed, trying to stay awake until Harry returned. It didn't work because Harry did not return. Since then, they slept in Harry's bed with the curtains open. They reasoned that, when Harry eventually returned to his bed, his mere presence would awaken them. Failing that, his screams of horror surely would.

They were right. Sort of. It wasn't Harry's presence that woke Heero up, but his footsteps. In the few short weeks that he knew Harry, Heero was able to recognize Harry's footsteps. They were fast but even, his left foot making a slightly louder slap than his right. Duh-DUH, duh-DUH, Heero's ears heard Harry's unique walk and relayed it to his brain. His brain then realized that the sound was coming from Harry and that Heero wanted to wake up for Harry. It yelled at Heero to wake up, so he did. Quatre woke up moments after Heero.

Heero yawned and stretched, trying to send off a casual vibe. Inside, he was anything but casual, the opposite of relaxed. Heero was a bundle of tightly stretched nerves, ready to ping-pong off the walls of his emotions should anything go wrong. This was the day Heero had been waiting for since he was seven years old and his mother told him what he was. This was the day of reckoning, the day to either make or break the prophecy, the day of the first bond. The bond of understanding. If Harry could not understand his brothers, he would never come to truly love them. If he could not love them, they could never become close enough to be considered brothers-not by Vanuli standards. If they were not brothers, they were nothing, and they would die.

Heero didn't know if Quatre understood the true importance of this night. He himself could barely grasp it, and even then, he had to hold on tight for the fear that it would fly away. Heero knew that, in order to get Harry to see-to understand, to realize, to know-what the three of them really were, he would have to tell things that he would rather have nobody know. Heero knew-he knew-that he would have to tell Harry the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help him GOD, if they were to be a family. There could be no secrets. He wouldn't allow it. Heero opened his mouth to speak, to tell Harry all of his secrets, but Harry beat him to it.

"Prove it to me," Harry said, standing right beside the bed. "Make me believe."

Heero could smell Harry's unique scent-cinnamon with a bit of musk. It was the same scent infused in Harry's pillows, in his sheets. It was yet another reason that Quatre and Heero slept in Harry's bed-it made them feel closer to him. Heero renewed his vow to make Harry understand, to prove it to him, to make him believe.

"What do you want us to prove to you?" Quatre asked, rising up behind Heero into a sitting position. He draped an arm over Heero's shoulder in a protective gesture. They had discussed how to react to Harry on Saturday night and had decided to feign ignorance until they were absolutely sure that Harry knew about them, but Heero still cringed at the way Quatre acted. His tone of voice was harsher than Heero would have liked, and the arm over the shoulder showed a possessiveness that they shouldn't show until later, when Harry was already involved. Heero knew that Quatre was prepared for Harry to reject them-and was, in fact, expecting it-and that he didn't want Heero to get hurt during the process. Quatre wanted Heero to know that he was always loved.

"Don't make me say it. Don't you dare make me say it," Harry said, lowering his voice to just above a whisper. It carried a quiet pleading to it. He was asking them to take it back, to deny it all and make it untrue.

Heero understood-Quatre did the same thing when he found out. But now was not the time to lie to Harry. If they didn't tell the truth, they would never be together. Heero decided to abandon "the plan."

"We're your brothers," Heero said, reaching out, even faster than he could during the war, and grabbing Harry as he started to run off. Heero might have lost much of his strength in the process of regaining his magic, but his speed had only grown. Strength wasn't what he needed now. Heero only needed to hold onto Harry for less than a moment. Still gripping Harry's arm, Heero sent a warm, relaxing feeling to him. He didn't use any emotions to amplify the effect, nor did he make Harry more open to the idea of being a Vanuli, he merely calmed Harry and made him less nervous. It worked like a very mild sedative.

Heero let go of his brother, but he could still feel Harry's similar magic dancing under his fingertips. "Please," Heero implored before Harry could walk away, "sit down. Let us explain."

***

For some reason unknown to Harry, all of the doubts plaguing his mind went away with Heero's touch. Harry didn't want to leave Quatre's or Heero's side, the two who claimed to be his brothers. Harry didn't know whether they were or not, but he did that he felt connected to them, somehow, someway. So when Heero offered to explain everything, Harry stayed.

Thus, all three boys came to be sitting in a triangle in what used to be called Indian style, but (because of political correctness) it was probably now call Native American style. Quatre and Harry faced Heero, Quatre probably knowing and Harry figuring it out that Heero was running the show, at least for now. It was fairly obvious that Heero knew the most about their situation and could shed a fair amount of light on it. Harry wanted to ask Heero so many things-one of them being "Just how much did Malfoy pay you to say this?"-but, in the end, he decided to demand, not ask, only one thing. Of course, it was a big thing.

"Start at the beginning," Harry said, leaning back against the post on his bed, "and tell me everything."

***

Heero opened his mouth to speak, and quickly closed it again. The "beginning" might be all well and good, but which beginning was he to use? Should he start with beginning of them or the beginning of their beginning, or even the beginning of their beginning's beginning? Heero didn't know, and he flopped back on Harry's pillows in frustration.

Normally, Heero wouldn't care too much. He would just pick one-the one that involved the least actual talking-and be done with it. If, later, more information was needed, he would cough it up. Now, however, he had to get it exactly right on the first try. Otherwise, Harry might think that Heero maliciously withheld information from him. So Heero decided to err on the side of too much information.

Heero cleared his throat-this was going to take a while. "Once upon a time," he began. It wasn't the best way to start such a story as this, but it was damned well how he was going to start it. He liked "once upon a time." "Once upon a time" was fairy tales, and fairy tales always ended with "and they lived happily ever after." Heero wanted them to have a "happily ever after," and he would do anything he could to get it. Even if the only thing he could do was say it out loud.

"Once upon a time, very, very far from here, there lived a great man named Heero Yuy. He lived, not on the land, but in the sky. Heero Yuy was a man of peace, an advocate for the alliance of all nations, whether they were Earth or colony. Heero Yuy was a great man with a vision for peace. He was the leader of the colonies and could have brought them independence from Earth and maintained a friendship with Earth. He was assassinated twenty-two years ago. Shot down in the prime of his life, of his career.

"Heero Yuy had many friends, and they were outraged at his loss. They swore revenge upon his killers-and they counted all of Earth as his killers. Five scientists in particular vowed to avenge his death with the most powerful of Mobile Suits: the Gundams. The men each went their separate ways, each to build a suit that would complement the other four. Each would train a pilot of extraordinary talent to pilot the suit and do their dirty work.

"I don't know about the other four, but one of the scientists did not want just anyone to pilot his suit. No, he wanted a weapon. A perfect weapon." Heero stopped speaking and looked away from his brothers. The next bit that he had to tell wasn't known by anyone other than the one's who'd lived it. Quatre only know bits and pieces, seen through that sometimes awful, sometimes great Sight of his, but not even he knew the whole story. Heero had hoped to never let anyone know of his childhood home. He drew his arms around his knees as he prepared to tell of it.

"Dr. J-that was his name-decided that, in order to get a perfect weapon, a perfect tool for him to wield, he would need a vast amount of candidates. And so J recruited, young men and women alike, entire battalions of prospective weapons. Heero Yuy's own son was among them. He was only twelve when he joined with J. J broke up his recruits into units-Alpha through Epsilon. There were twelve recruits per unit, their rank going in ascending order. The Ones were the leaders of their units, the Twelves were the pretty much lower than dirt.

"J trained his recruits. He worked them so hard that many died. It soon became evident to him that none of his recruits would ever be perfect. They were tainted by their former lives. And that's when he began his breeding program. He took the best of his soldiers-for they were not good enough to be weapons and would forever only attain the rank of soldier-and bred them with each other. Their offspring, the Zetas and Etas, were born into a world of training. They knew nothing of play or fun or friends. They grew up with battle tactics and guns and hexes."

"Soon, J came to see that his human weapons would never be perfect, so he began to experiment with a whole host of other creatures. There was a unit of Sirens, one of minotaurs, even one of Acromantula Homomagi. They were Acromantula that could appear human-always as blonde, voluptuous females-at will. Very scary girls, but nice. Those units were from Theta to Upsilion.

"When none of those units measured up to J's unrealistic expectations, he went back to his human breeding, but he also began a search for the perfect species from which to breed his perfect weapon. Eventually, he heard about the Vanuli, and his search was over. Vanuli were very powerful beings that could appear to be any creature they wished and were fiercely loyal to their family? If J could have one and train it to think of him as family, he would have his perfect weapon.

"Of course, Dr. J didn't want a normal Vanuli. There were over 8,000 Vanuli in existence, and if he could get his hands on one, surely the enemy could as well. No, J wanted a special Vanuli. So when he heard about the immense raw power of Vanuli twins, he decided that he wanted something even grander than them. Something no one had ever thought possible, and thus that no one else would have. He wanted triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets, anything as long as they were more powerful than, as he put it, "present models."

"However, as I and Quatre and now you know, the womb of a Vanuli woman will only expand far enough to hold one six pound baby. No one really knows why, except for the fact that is how it has always been. Most likely, that is how it will always be. Dr. J knew this. He also knew that, for every rule, there is always an exception. The exception, of course, being Vanuli twins. Occasionally, always to the most powerful clans-the LeFeys, the Peacecrafts, the Morrigals-a set of twins would pop up. Usually only once every nine generations or so.

"No one really knows why twins would occur. Or rather, I should say, no one knew why twins would occur. After extensive research and...field testing, J eventually discovered the genetics behind such a rare occurence. He discovered that it was related to the unique energy signatures the parents emitted. He found that twins were actually conceived quite often, but if the signatures on the parents' reproductive bits were not synchronized or very nearly so, the twins would abort before the mother was even aware she was pregnant. For triplets, J surmised, the amount of similarity between the parents' energy signatures had to be even higher to prevent the fetuses from aborting. With the very low chance of even conceiving triplets-after all, even in the human world, identical triplets are a pretty rare occurrence-the opportunity for a mother to give birth to a set was slim to none.

"And then J discovered something else. He discovered that the instances of twins was distinctly higher in the more promiscuous families. As I said before, it was usually the LeFeys, the Peacecrafts, the Morrigals. They are all noble families, and as such, they enjoy a greater amount of sexual partners. What Dr. J discovered was that when there were two fathers instead of one, it was their combined energy signature that was compared with the mother's. As there was two of them, the chances of getting a match out of the combination was significantly greater, and thus infraternal twins were much more common than identical or fraternal twins.

"That was the philosophy J went on when he went about trying to create us. The only problem was, he needed a Vanuli woman and three men to do it."

***

Quatre could sense his younger brothers tiring. Heero wasn't used to talking so much. Hell, a great orator from Talkaholics Anonymous wasn't used to talking as much as Heero just had. But, as both he and Heero knew, the story had to be told, and it had to be told tonight. Quatre hugged Heero once more before whispering to him that he would take over. After all, Quatre knew practically everything about their mother that Heero did. If Quatre left anything out, he was sure that Heero would speak up. Heero gave Quatre a Glare O' Death, and Quatre, like the magnificent older brother that he was, took that as a cue to begin.

"We're not really sure how J convinced our mother to bear us," Quatre said. "All we really learned, from a file Dr. J had on the project-Project Three, he called it. Very original, right?" Quatre snorted. It amazed him sometimes how the most intelligent of men-and evil bastard that he was, J was smart-could be so uncreative. "From the file, we learned that J, somehow, got a Vanuli woman to come aboard the project. He could get no men to join her, and so had to find three other men to impregnate her. The "her" in question being our mother, Miss Morgan LeFey the Seventh, the sole surviving daughter of the twins Aravu LeFey and the heir to the LeFey clan.

"J used many of his weapons in an attempt to make Morgan pregnant, but no three men were a good match. In fact, only one of them was even a candidate to impregnate her-the original Heero Yuy's son, Heero Yuy II. Several others were very close to meeting it, but only he actually did. Then, J only needed two more fathers.

"J found my father, Raberba Winner, several months after that, when he and his wife Quaterina came into a Wizard fertility clinic that was under J's watch. Raberba and Quaterina already had twenty-nine daughters-all born from test tubes-but, to their horror, they could never conceive a son. One of J's associates ran a signature scan on my father, and he came up as a match for Morgan.

"J's associate invited Raberba and Quaterina to join a new project virtually guaranteed to give them a male heir. In their naivety, they agreed, and J had a second father.

"It wasn't long after that until your parents, Harry, came into another clinic that J was watching. James and Lily Potter had been trying for months to conceive a child, all to no avail. They feared that one, or both, of them became infertile due to curse injuries. James was fine-healthy, even-but Lily was not. A hex that hit her in the stomach rendered her sterile.

"J's associate-a different one-performed the scan on James. When he came up a match, the associate offered them the opportunity to join a new project. It wasn't guaranteed, she said, it was still in the experimental stages. But, she said, it might be able to let the couple have children that were both his and hers. After hearing the complete spiel, James and Lily agreed to try it. They signed on, and J had the third father. His search was over."

***

Harry listened to Quatre in growing frustration. This couldn't be true, could it? Heero and Quatre being his brother-Harry might be able to accept it, given time. Not being human-not extremely unlikely given his past of accomplishing the impossible. But Lily Potter not being his real, true mother? Harry wasn't sure he could ever come to believe that.

"So what happened after that?" Harry asked coldly. He honestly couldn't tell if the words came out harsher than or not as harsh as he intended. The little flinch from Heero that he saw out of the corner of his eye led Harry to believe the former. He had to-almost literally-stop himself from comforting Heero. Quatre had no such compunctions, and Harry felt a flair of almost-not-quite-jealousy when he gave Heero a one-armed hug.

"After that," Quatre said, the friendliness in his voice dropping ten degrees or so, "J collected specimens from each of the fathers and inserted them into Morgan. They took, and she became pregnant. Four and a half months later, on July 31, AC 180, three bouncing baby boys were born. We were then snatched away by our loving fathers and taken everywhere but near each other. Heero and I found each other during the most recent Muggle War. Shortly after we discovered the exact nature of our relationship, we met Dorothy Catalonia. We found out what she was to us shortly after the war. And we found out who you were, our most precious Second, shortly after that."

Harry got the feeling that Quatre didn't like him much. To be more general, Harry got the feeling that Quatre didn't like anyone who hurt Heero. And, try as he like, Harry felt the same way. He didn't want anyone to hurt Heero or Quatre. Harry didn't know if he would ever come to accept them as his brothers (although, it was becoming more likely with every passing minute), but he knew that he could love them a great deal. Possibly, already did.

"I need to think," Harry said. It was the absolute truth. He had learned so much tonight, it would take him forever to absorb it all. "I want to sleep it over." Harry tried to shoo Heero and Quatre away, but it didn't work.

"Can we sleep with you?" Heero asked. He asked in such a way that the most evil demon in the deepest depths of hell could not deny him. Nevertheless, Harry tried. He attempted give Heero a resounding "No," but what came out was a more excited "Yes." As Quatre and Heero settled on either side of him, snuggling up close, Harry could not bring his mind to complain.

Selune